Sensible DH saw something spooky

[Listengold]

Recently we went to visit an old jail.
In the reception area DH was laughing and talking to the man on the desk.
All good advised to go through the door into an annex and read lots of information to help us understand and make the most of the tour. There was only us in that part.
Go through the door into the annex which was empty and DH started to feel down.
Read the info and started to the next room DH started to get upset.
After 3 more rooms we had to leave as DH was crying.

Outside the man on the desk told us that a séance had been performed 3 nights before. DH wouldn't say much.
It was nearly 5 hours later DH felt comfortable to say that there was a man following us which made him worried. The way he described the man was that he was dressed in tatty clothes and had something around his legs. He said he was getting upset because of the sight of this poor man.
There is a lot more but he said that he couldn't tell me anymore as he thinks I'd not believe him.

DH is sensible, not prone to exaggerate and always says it is rubbish people seeing things.

The diehard sceptics can never accept that some people are more acutely sensitive to spooky things than others - who are just missing whatever ‘receptors’ they may be.
My DM was acutely (and sometimes unnervingly) telepathic even over long distances.
I am not.
People’s abilities do differ.

I used to work at a castle which was reputed to be haunted, once we all watched on CCTV a ghost following a school party around. It was mainly children who got spooked in there. Every few months ghosthunters would hold an overnight event and over the next few days a number of children would flatly refuse to set foot in there.

People who have these experiences come from all walks of life. The religious ones will call on their priest (and it sounds like not many of them do.) My grandmother was religious and kept her experiences to herself...she certainly didn't share them with her vicar.

The spiritual ones are probably not going to call on the Church to help them.

I just Googled it and apparently 67% of Americans say they have had a paranormal experience and 83% say they had a paranormal experience at home. Are they all mentally ill? Drunk? Lying? Mistaken? Some will be. But all 83% of them? What happens if you have a paranormal experience that you simply can't explain because it seems to have some meaning?

I was staying with a friend when I was in my twenties and saw a ghost at night. I saw his exact appearance (with a very distinctive facial trait) and he had a certain demeanour that suggested he wasn't happy I was there. Her father asked me to describe him in the morning (he believed, like I do in ghosts) and told me it was the previous owner (who they knew personally) and he looked exactly like I described with the trait I saw. I wasn't the first to have seen him. Other friends refuse to stay there.

For me, there's too many experiences that can't be explained away as mental illness or a mistake.

I'm glad we live in more spiritually open times and I won't be hauled off to the mental asylum because of my experiences. I also think a doctor would be out of their depth when you tell them about it.

Personally I would only see a doctor if you are also struggling with your mental health, or if you see ghoulish, negative things and you feel powerless or victimised by it.

I'm like your DH. I don't believe in ghosts, an afterlife or any of that stuff. I am the very definition of a sceptic and always have been.

And yet I spent a year being haunted. Kept seeing a figure out of the corner of my eye around the house. When I looked properly it was gone. It particularly liked to stand at the top or bottom of the stairs and make me jump out of my skin. One night when I was home alone it spent some time lobbing a spoon around my kitchen.

It wasn't real, of course it wasn't! I was going through the most horrible, stressful period of my life I've ever had, wasn't getting enough sleep, and my brain decided to play silly buggers.

But just because someone is a "sensible", skeptical, person, doesn't mean environmental or emotional factors aren't still capable of scaring the fuck out of them.

Beaumaris Gaol is known for odd events happening -

https://www.hauntedrooms.co.uk/ghost-hunts/beaumaris-gaol

Well I don’t think a GP appointment is necessary. Our imaginations are crazy and brains do weird things.

e.g optical illusions.

Intense emotional feelings are very normal especially at a brutally distressing place. You wouldn’t call visitors to Auschwitz “crazy” for feeling distressed and upset.

Just because OPs husband had a visual distressing experience doesn’t make him stupid or crazy. Or mentally unwell. It makes him human and it’s people with this level of empathy who help make the world a better place.

Our brains have glitches / hallucinations all the time. I suffer from Alice in Wonderland Syndrome - it’s literally a warning before a seizure! It’s a neurological response not “craziness”…

what if you cry over a book? That’s literally just your imagination visualising things….

I just think some of these replies are a bit drama llama for one random moment 🦙

(obviously if his MH declines he’ll need to see a GP but OP will know that already!)

Absolutely. But you recognise that this was your own brain dealing with sleeplessness and stress, just as I recognise that when the shadows on the floor started talking threateningly to me, I had post-natal psychosis. The OP’s husband is clearly not able to recognise his own mental state for what is is at the moment, so the OP needs to at the very least keep a close eye, rather than deciding her DH met a Victorian prisoner.

OP, was your husband horribly sleep deprived?

Some people who have hallucinations are going to be mentally ill, many are not.

This is a good reason to see a doctor.

And the doctor's response should never depend on their beliefs.

That's a really slippery slope right there.

Great, adding to my list

@HappyAutumnFields I don't think that all people who have these experiences are mentally ill. If so, then I must have been mentally ill on and off throughout my life, and so are many people I know. You had an experience of psychosis but that doesn't mean everyone is having that experience, too, when they experience something unexplained.

The thing to consider here is that psychosis is more prolonged and often will be experienced as evil or threatening. A paranormal experience is something unexplained that isn't generally experienced that way. It's often just something a person sees. However, if someone says they see/feel a spirit is attacking them and they can't stop it and they're distressed, they should go see a doctor.

I’m sorry but even if he did see a ghost why was he crying?

(Don’t ever visit the Sistine chapel with him, OP).

There's a lovely bit in 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time':

"Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbow and non-stick frying pans".

I like that explanation. I like the idea that once upon a time a thunderstorm would have been seen as a sign from God and now we understand what's causing it. Even though we won't properly understand it, in the way that I don't understand how the internet works, but some clever people do and I trust what they tell me so that's okay.

I think people with urgent new presentations of psychosis are seen rapidly tbh.
Nephew told me about his hallucinations and delusions (not that he knew they were delusions) about 1pm. Got an urgent call from GP at 3pm and the psychiatric home treatment team were on his doorstep by 6pm. He had said to his mum that he didn't want to bother the doctor as he thought he wouldn't be seen. A different area from where I work but response can be rapid.

But I agree, I don't think they would jump into action over this

@Cheepcheepcheep I love that! I’m going to screenshot for the next time my son is scared of the dark. He’s quite sensible but still gets spooked easily and I know he’ll appreciate this

I think we haven’t even began to plumb the depths of the human mind and what it is capable of. I think ghosts are actually hallucinations suggested by the brain due to environmental and emotional factors, perhaps part of a fear response. It is fascinating and would be more useful to study that than the so-called paranormal.

I thought someone would mention the Sistine Chapel! 😂 😂

I think it's a bit of a stretch to automatically assume that there's something wrong with someones mental health just because he creeped himself out though.

There are all kinds of environmental factors that can cause someone to be creeped out. A lot of the supposedly "most haunted" places have something going on with infrasound, which can make us feel scared, and depressed, and even see things that aren't there.

Or there's a trick you can play on your own brain by staring at a mirror with a candle directly behind you. Do it long enough and you start seeing your face change in disturbing ways. Both are just the environment causing your mind and body to glitch in weird ways.

There's a walk I go on alongside a river near me. It's an absolutely lovely walk, but at one point you have to pass alongside a narrow path between the river and this old abandoned victorian building. It creeps me out and has the same effect on absolutely everyone else I've ever taken along that route. There's no reason to be scared, theres nothing paranormal going on, and it's not like we're all suddenly having mental health episodes every time we walk past it. There's just some combination of environmental factors going on there that make our primitive lizard brains go "Danger!"

I'm not saying that "Keep an eye on your husband" is bad advice. It can't hurt! But taking it as a sign that something is very wrong might be going a bit far.

This^

By the way certain eye conditions can lead to seeing shadows do I ll do an eye test as well.

Interesting when a non-woo person experiences things. I always felt unhappy in the White Tower in the Tower of London when I visited as a tourist, but when I worked in there for a while I kept quiet about my feelings. One of my workmates was a down to earth person who would scoff at anyone's paranormal experiences or beliefs, but bloody hell when she went in that particular place she would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money, she fled through there so quickly!

Such arrogance. You can’t possibly know either way. Agnosticism is the only honest approach when dealing with phenomena that cannot proven either way.

Nevertheless. The answer lies in the nature of reality and consciousness, quantum mechanics and the laws of physics.

Science rooted in materialism is only getting half the story.

The majority of people who perceive these things are most definitely not mentally ill.

There is a lot more but he said that he couldn't tell me anymore as he thinks I'd not believe him.

So the mystery stuff on top of being followed by a man/ghost in rags and something round his leg… but he got through the information room and 3 more? When did the ghost show up? Hardcore if he lasted 3 rooms of that!